Much of Phoenix is generally pretty flat but at the same time we have peaks rising from right in the middle of the city to as high as 1400 feet above the mean ground level of the surrounding city (we are also ringed my mountains around at least three sides of the city, which is why we call ourselves the valley of the sun). Anyway, here is a view from Camelback Mountain taken just the other day, probably the last day under 75 degrees we will have for 6 months. This is a 360 degree panorama (you can see the same dude with bright yellow shirt on both ends). You can click on it to get the full effect.

We took the Echo Canyon trail which is pretty challenging (there are several long stretches where one is basically climbing from rock to rock rather than just marching up a trail). It is worth it though - it's pretty unusual to have this sort of climb and end up dead in the middle of a major city. The one block of undeveloped space at the right end of the picture is actually prime real estate and would be all city-fied were it not for the fact that it is Native American tribal land, one of the fortunate tribes (unlike the Navajo) who were shoved onto cr*p land but land which eventually ended up near a major city and so became valuable.

Ironically, while most cities don't have any feature like this, we have at least two: Not even 5 miles away is Piestewa Peak that is just a few feet shorter, has an easier trail, and oddly has a totally different geology (you can see it just to the left of center in this photo). Piestewa Peak used to be known as, and is still referred to by locals, as Squaw Peak -- a name that has been officially deprecated for moderately obvious reasons of wokeness. The city struggled for years with changing its name, not knowing what to change the name to, when opportunity emerged out of tragedy when a young, local Native American woman serving in the US Army was killed in the Middle East. Piestewa Peak is surrounded by a large tract of open space that is hilly and largely pristine desert landscape (around the center of the photo). It is so large that one hike in it and, despite it being right in the center of the city, one can completely lose sight of the city in all directions and really get a desert hiking experience without actually going out of town.

It is a tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West architecture school (in Scottsdale, AZ) that students build their own small shelter in the desert. I am a fan of Dan Simmons' Hyperion series. If any of you read it, perhaps you remember the section where Aenea is at some strange out-of-time version of this school. Following the real-world tradition, she builds her own dwelling in the desert.

These are not necessarily cardboard box and plywood forts -- many are real engineered structures whose materials can be expensive (the students do most of the building with their own hands). I wish more architecture schools emphasized their students actually constructing some of their own work.

As an aside, if you are in Phoenix, I would put Taliesin West as one of the top 2 places to tour in town, along with the Musical Instrument Museum. Phoenix of course is much more of an outdoor town. The very top thing to do in town, not just to tour, is probably to climb Camelback Mountain or Piestawa peak. Both are mountains dead in the middle of the city, something that is relatively unusual (in Denver, Portland, Seattle, etc the mountains are off to one side). The views are spectacular, and there is no funicular or cable car. The view only rewards effort.